Hi and welcome to your first edition of BRCbuilders e- zine. We are dedicated to helping you, our fellow cleaner and restorer, build your business to become extremely profitable, rewarding, and hassle-free. To say the least we're extremely excited about this opportunity to help you grow!

Like you, we at BRC Systems Solutions generally dislike e-newsletters because they're seldom filled with meat and are often only created as a vehicle for sales. While we would never pretend that we don't want you to buy something from us, we promise that every edition of your free BRCbuilders e-zine will contain valuable information that you can use in your business immediately.

Each edition we'll cover common problems and solutions that affect your business. Please feel free to email topics of interest and we'll do our best to answer them in upcoming editions.

We have created 3 unique tips and hints identifiers that we call "Profitable Pointers". We will archive these pointers and place them on our website for future reference.

The 3 categories of Profitable Pointers are as follows:

• Profitable Sales Pointer
• Profitable Marketing Pointer
• Profitable Systems Pointer

With the preliminaries out of the way, grab a cup of coffee, sit back in your comfy office chair and open your mind to some new proven techniques and tips to help your company become wildly successful without losing your sanity!

Everybody's talking about systems these days, but what does it really mean and how does it affect you and your business?

In its simplest definition, a system is nothing more than an organized, planned, and predictable way of doing things.

For example when we talk about "marketing systems" we don't mean a single piece of advertising or even several pieces. A marketing system is all of your marketing efforts working together in a synergistic fashion with your other systems that provides the owner/manager with predictable results.

There are 5 types of systems:

• Organizational & Administrative - the structure
• Procedural - "how we do things here"
• Marketing - "how we sell here"
• Financials - "how we pay for it"
• Benchmarks - the way to check

With these 5 basic systems set up one can run just about any business. Think of the power of that statement! With only the knowledge of 5 basic systems, you can successfully run virtually any business.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Harvard Business Grad!

We're often asked, "I'm a one-man band, do I really need to write systems?" That's entirely up to you. Suffice it to say if your customers like continuity (they do) and you enjoy your sanity (we hope you do!) writing systems will help make even the smallest company run smoother and more profitable. Hey, it's better than watching TV, isn't it? Of course it is. There are few things in business that will directly affect the profitability of a company than by working more on it rather than in it. Especially when it comes to marketing, finances, and productivity.

Of course there's a little more to know about how these systems work but basically it all boils down to only a handful of things:

• Organizing
• Knowing who does what
• Implementing successful marketing (via testing)
• Knowing your numbers
• Training your staff
• Checking progress

I can hear you now - "So where do I start?"

Start with writing down the tasks that you do and assign these tasks to a Job Description. (we call them Positional Contracts) Next you "tweak" your systems to make them better. There's no such thing as a perfect system so always look for ways to improve and work smarter not harder.

If you have employees, enlist them to help write the systems. Who says you need to do all the work? Your employees, surprisingly, will most likely come up with some extremely good material. Just be careful they don't delegate or remove the necessary tasks they dislike! Simply tell them that you're not giving them a license to do away with the things necessary that have made you successful - you're merely asking for their professional input to enhance their customer relationship and ultimately their future with your company.

In future editions we'll dig more into the types of systems and how they directly affect various aspects of your business. In the meantime, happy writing!

We have two classes on the docket for spring so far. If you'd like for us to teach a business building course in your area please contact your distributor and have them give us a call. We're extremely accommodating and our classes reasonably priced - especially considering the $1,000's of dollars in value every student receives from one of our classes!

Here's our spring '06 schedule:

Here are a few things students are saying about our classes:

• March 30th, 2006 - Sturbridge, MA - Hosted by NEIRC. Contact #:
• April 13-14, 2006 - Denver, CO - Hosted by Steam Way International. Contact#: 800-447- 8326